


The Darkness of Night

by unwillingadventurer



Category: Raffles - E. W. Hornung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27061201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwillingadventurer/pseuds/unwillingadventurer
Summary: Raffles and Bunny read Dracula.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	The Darkness of Night

\---Harry Manders’ journal---

\---17th October---

This, my first entry of my life at Ham Common, is what is to be a journal of my many adventures. I now reside here in this beautiful cottage with A.J Raffles or Ralph or whatever else he shall call himself forthwith, and I sit in my bed, in my long white nightdress, snuggled under the covers for comfort and warmth.

I shall recall the events of the evening prior which sends the most tremendous shivers down my spine even thinking of it. It had been an ordinary autumn day until that point— a long walk by the riverside with Raffles where we trampled through wet leaves and mud, followed by a hearty lunch prepared by our landlady and then an afternoon nap, reading of newspapers, and an early supper which made one lethargic and craving the bliss of lengthy sleep. It was far too early to go into a deep sleep however so Raffles and I parted ways for the night, went toward our rooms where I vowed to read more of the novel Dracula than he. 

“You’ll never catch up, Bunny, I’ve a hundred pages on you,” he had said with a glint in his eye as he moved into the doorway of his room.

“You just wait,” I said. 

How Raffles could have read so much when I barely saw him turn a page was the biggest mystery and I wondered whether he truly was reading it at all, rather skimming it for important passages to recount to me at breakfast. 

“Bunny, don’t let the book frighten you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, A.J; it’s a story. I have no intention of taking it for truth.”

“You don’t believe in vampires then?”

“Well, blood-drinking fiends possibly, but not this kind,” I said, waving the novel in the air. 

“There is something rather…alluring about the idea of a vampire isn’t there, Bunny?”

“There is?”

“They’re on the outside as we are, Bunny, away from society, confined to shadow, seeking what they wish as night falls, drawn by the cravings of some desperate need. I rather admire it.”

I thought for a moment and realised Raffles had a point. He too certainly had an alluring quality of his own, one that drew me in, hypnotised by that handsome face and devilish grin. He had an intense craving of his own, only his was for jewels and riches not the blood of some unsuspecting victim.

“Goodnight A.J,” I said, shutting my door and climbing under the covers. I turned on the bedside lamp and opened my book. 

There was a sudden chill in the bedroom and my feet which had been sticking out of the blanket were now freezing. I pulled my legs up under the covers and got comfortable, placing the pillows behind my back, ready to read as many words as were possible.

An hour or so must have passed then and so engrossed in my book was I that nothing else seemed to rouse or distract me. Finally, after my eyes began to blur, I yawned and closed the book, placing it on the bedside table. I now, brought out of my fiction and back to reality, noticed the light from the moon shone into the room just lightly and all around me it was deathly silent like a morgue. I switched off the lamp, lit a solitary candle, and attempted to find a comfy position in which to sleep. I tossed. I turned. My eyes would not stay closed. In the darkness of the room, there were shapes and shadows I did not recognise. How quickly our imaginations ran wild when they were stimulated. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Bunny,” I said to myself. “That is simply your jacket hanging on the wardrobe.”

I could hear a tapping on the window then and grabbed the covers instinctively, pulling them to my chin, shivering as I realised someone was knocking from the outside. The curtains were still open so with a deep breath, I climbed out of bed, placing my now warm feet on the cold creaky floorboards. With each tremulous step the wood creaked more and more until I reached the window and peered out into the autumn night. I grabbed a lantern from the table and shone it outside. There was no one at the window, in fact, there was only the tree branches hitting the glass— the twigs, like skeletal fingers reaching outwards.

I sighed with relief. “Just a tree.” And then I reached toward the curtains, but as I did, I narrowed my eyes and I saw something in the distance. To the back of the fields lay a church and its graveyard, and shining my lantern I could see that among the outlines of graves and tombs was some kind of figure. It was moving slowly in the darkness and was as black as the night itself. It appeared to be wearing a cloak and when its arms raised it looked as though it possessed bat wings, flying, gliding closer and closer to my window. My breath fogged up the glass. I gasped.

“The Count!” I closed the curtains quickly and stood there unsure of what to do. “He’s found me.”

With hastened footsteps I scurried back to my bed, jumping under the blanket and covering my entire body and head underneath as I waited and waited for him to arrive. My heart raced. “Don’t be silly,” I told myself. “This isn’t real. There’s no one there. There’s no such thing as Dracula.”

I resisted the temptation to go downstairs and seize some garlic cloves from the larder and instead I cowered under those covers, too afraid to admit my fears to Raffles in the next room. I could call for him but that would make me look like a coward. No, I had to be brave I told myself. But then the knocking started again, knocking that did not sound like the tapping of tree branches but instead the knocking of someone’s determined hand upon the glass.

There was a sudden bang next and I peered out of the cover and saw the window fling open— the candle blowing out— the curtains lifting into the air— my paperwork flying across the room like it had been possessed by a ghost. Then the cold hit me. A gust of wind rushed through and my covers started to move, lifting slightly into the air. I jumped out of bed, standing innocently in my white nightdress, and stared apprehensively at the gaping window, inviting whatever was outside— in.

“Hello?” I whispered.

There was something there! It was climbing in through the window! I could hear the breathing of a man, a grunting and a puffing and then I could see a black sweeping cape, lifting in the wind as though this thing were to fly away at any moment. I wished he would fly away but instead he jumped from the window sill into the room, the cape covering his face, concealing his identity. He walked toward me slowly and I closed my eyes.

Why was I suddenly ready to abandon my fears and reach out for him? Why in that moment did I feel the need to be with him? I opened my eyes and pulled the cape from around him, revealing not some pale vampire but my own Raffles, staring at me in confusion.

“Bunny, are you quite alright?”

“Raffles!”

I was pacing then, too shocked to speak, too angry to listen. He turned on the lamp and looked at the mess in the room, papers everywhere.

“I say, did I frighten you?”

“Of course you did! Why are you climbing into my bedroom window? I didn’t know you’d even gone out. I thought you were reading Dracula?”

“I was. I wanted to give you a chance to catch up so I thought I’d run an errand. You know your window is much more of a challenge than mine?”

“Why didn’t you come through the front door the way a human might as opposed to a demon?” I said, still panting.

“Ah, sorry about that, forgot my key and didn’t wish to wake you.”

“Didn’t wish to wake me? You flew in through my window as if you were a bat!”

Raffles sat down upon the edge of my bed and smirked. “By Jove, you look rather fetching in that nightie. You weren’t—scared— were you?”

I folded my arms and climbed back into bed. “Scared? Don’t be absurd.”

“You didn’t think—well, you didn’t think I was Dracula—did you?”

“No!” I looked away from him but something drew me to gaze at him again. In the light, his face was pale and inviting and his silver curls tumbled softly onto his face. His eyes were alight with mischief and there was his penetrating stare. Oh, how I was unable to resist that stare. My mouth hung open, looking upon him as though a spell had been cast and I no longer possessed free will. He leaned over me, hovering his unscrupulous but desirable mouth over my neck.

“What if I… were Dracula, Bunny?” he said with a haunting whisper. I felt his cold breath on my skin and then tingles travelled through every part of my body. The deepness of his voice sent vibrations through my soul and I tensed up as his lips stopped inches from my flesh. 

“Are…you…Dracula?” I said, eyes closed, waiting for his teeth to pierce my skin. I could still sense him there, his cold body, his shallow breathing. I opened my eyes when I felt no contact.

“Your neck looks tasty,” he said, opening his mouth to reveal his wonderful teeth, yet thankfully not pointy at all.

“I’m conflicted,” I said, suddenly realising the thought of Raffles as a vampire coming to devour me with that mouth held quite an appeal. 

He moved away from me and laughed. “Of course, if we were vampires we could live together forever, eternally connected as it were.”

I shivered with pleasure at the thought. “But they don’t exist.”

“So you say.” He winked at me. “Of course you haven’t finished the novel so how do you know it’s fiction and not a real diary of events? Jonathan Harker might be real.”

“He might, but A.J Raffles is the one in the room with me. Are you going to bite me and let us spend eternity together, searching the night not for gems but for blood?”

He laughed. “Speaking of gems, Bunny, take a look at this.” He held out his white gloved hand to reveal a greenish-black stone with red markings across it. The gem was set inside a gold signet ring and seemed to shine under the light. “It’s a bloodstone. Rather apt don’t you think?”

“I say, where did you acquire that?”

His held his gloved finger to his lips. “Dracula never reveals his secrets.”

“Oh A.J, really. You had me frightened to death with all this nonsense. I’ll admit it was exciting for a moment but can you just be A.J Raffles again?”

“Very well. In that case, move over a bit,” he replied, placing the ring on the table and then climbing under the covers next to me. “I’m shagged out. I’ll get some sleep whilst you can try and catch up with me in page count.”

I opened the book and then Raffles’ head snuggled under my chin.

“If I were Dracula, Bunny, I should be glad of a beautiful neck like yours.” Instead of a puncture wound, he lay two kisses on my skin and there he fell into slumber, not as a vampire but as my A.J Raffles, Raffles in the flesh, alive and warm and real with a beating heart. He smiled with his eyes closed. “As Stoker says, ‘there are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

I planted a kiss on his head. “Night, A.J.”

And thus was the first night’s events I have recorded in this journal and as I scribble down these words the next evening, he still lies beside me, dreaming away, not a care in the world. Who knows what I may write tomorrow or the next day, what my ink will read when it lays upon the paper and is viewed in many years to come? How the empty pages will soon be full of my words, many of which will pertain to A.J Raffles. I welcome our future endeavours and submit myself to his ever-alluring presence, though thankfully not as a vampire!

Harry Manders.


End file.
